You're an enlightened world citizen. Your T-shirt says "9/11 was an inside job." You're pretty sure we're living in a fascist state, that President Bush taps the Dixie Chicks' phones, Christian abortion clinic bombers outnumber jihadis, and the war on "terror" is a distraction from the real threats: carbon emissions and Pat Robertson. Then you learn that 17 people were arrested in a terrorist bomb plot. How do you process the information? Let's take it step by step.

Gosh, that's horrible, you think. But no -- that's what they WANT you to feel. Recall the prime directive: Question Authority (unless he's a college professor). The plotters must have been impoverished olive farmers radicalized by the removal of Saddam Hussein. Why, if someone came in and toppled your president, you'd go to their country and ... well, you'd thank them. Unless they did it for the wrong reasons! Then you'd blow something up. Like an SUV dealership. At night. Anyway, you understand; you care a lot about Iraqis these days. You think about Iraq more than China, to be honest, but it's not as if you'll scrape off your "Free Tibet" bumper sticker -- unless it's to make room for "Free Darfur." Or "Hands Off Darfur," depending.

Wait a minute: The "terrorists" were Canadian? You can understand someone blowing up trains in Spain and London. They sent troops to an illegal war cooked up by neocons who want to kill brown people for Exxon and Jesus, or something. You can understand, reluctantly, blowing up teens in an Israeli pizza parlor, because the Jews took the West Bank from the sovereign, ancient nation of Palestine. (How can a liberal socialist country behave so poorly? The world is full of mysteries.) But Canada? Isn't Michael Moore from Canada? You can get medical marijuana from married gay doctors in Canada, and no one has guns. You console yourself: Maybe they were really planning to attack the U.S.

You realize the suspects were all Muslim, and you dread the inevitable pogroms. Haven't been any yet, but any day now. You read that a mosque was vandalized in Toronto after the arrest, and you feel a certain grim relief. Finally, racism! Banners. If you're going to have a march, you'll need banners.

But wait. You read that the suspects were not connected to al-Qaida, and you're confused for a moment. Maybe it won't be over if they get Osama bin Laden (provided he isn't really in an supersecret Idaho prison). What if the "terrorists" hate you for their own reasons? The evildoer-in-chief said "they hate our freedoms" -- as if we have freedoms, really, just try and get a bike-messenger job that has full health benefits. But what if rights and mixed-sex education and an economy based on sustainable hemp-based art installations mean nothing to them?

Maybe you could convince them to hold off while you fix Amerikkka. At least you can get it down to one k. Maybe if the Democrats take the House back. A 10-seat swing won't make the imams cool down, but 20 seats, in red states? Would that be a good-faith effort?

You worry this will push Haditha off the front page. It's very important that everyone concentrate on the atrocities committed by U.S. troops every day. (It's such a relief not to have to pretend to support the troops anymore.) Anyway, nothing happened. Nothing blew up. If the suspects were planning something, they didn't do it, and this proves we can handle this as a law enforcement matter. Even though the police are racists.

Your head hurts.

You have a friend in Toronto. She's cool. It would kill her if these arrests were made possible by NSA eavesdropping.

You find yourself almost wishing there was another real attack, so people could see the logical consequences of "fighting back" after 9/11. Yes, it would be bad, but sometimes you have to break an egg to show people the health impact of omelettes. Is it wrong to wish the Canadian terrorists might have succeeded?

WASHINGTON -- While her security contingent waits outside the Georgetown restaurant, Ayaan Hirsi Ali orders what the menu calls "raw steak tartare.'' Amused by the redundancy, she speculates that it is intended to immunize the restaurant against lawyers, should a customer be discommoded by that entree. She has been in America only two weeks. She is a quick study.

And an exile and an immigrant. Born 36 years ago in Somalia, Hirsi Ali has lived in Ethiopia, Kenya, Saudi Arabia and the Netherlands, where she settled in 1992 after she deplaned in Frankfurt, supposedly en route to Canada for a marriage, arranged by her father, to a cousin. She makes her own arrangements.

She quickly became a Dutch citizen, a member of parliament, and an astringent critic, from personal experience, of the condition of women under Islam. She wrote the script, and filmmaker Theo van Gogh directed, "Submission,'' an 11-minute movie featuring pertinent passages from the Koran (such as when it is a husband's duty to beat his wife) projected on the bodies of naked women.

It was shown twice before Nov. 2, 2004, when van Gogh, bicycling through central Amsterdam in the morning, was shot by an Islamic extremist who then slit his throat with a machete. Next, the murderer (in whose room was found a disk containing videos of "enemies of Allah'' being murdered, including a man having his head slowly sawed off) used another knife to pin a long letter to van Gogh's chest. The letter was to Hirsi Ali, calling her a "soldier of evil'' who would "smash herself to pieces on Islam.''

The remainder of her life in Holland was lived under guard. Neighbors in her apartment building complained that they felt endangered with her there and got a court to order her evicted. She decided to come to America.

Holland evidently tolerates everything except skepticism about the sacramental nature of multiculturalism. One million of the country's 16 million residents are Islamic, and the political left has appropriated the European right's traditional celebration of identity grounded in racial and ethnic traditions and culture. But the recoil of many Dutch people from Hirsi Ali suggests that the tolerance about which Holland preens is a compound of intellectual sloth and moral timidity. She was more trouble than the Dutch evidently think free speech is worth.

Her story is told in a riveting new book, "Murder in Amsterdam,'' by Ian Buruma, who is not alone in finding her -- this "Enlightenment fundamentalist'' -- somewhat unnerving and off-putting. Having experienced life circumscribed by tribal and religious communities (as a girl she suffered the genital mutilation called female circumcision), she is a fierce partisan of individualism against collectivism.

She reminds Buruma of Margaret Thatcher's sometimes abrasive intelligence, and fascination with America. He is dismissive of the idea that she is a Voltaire against Islam: Voltaire, he says, offended the powerful Catholic Church, whereas she offends "only a minority that was already feeling vulnerable in the heart of Europe.''

She, however, replies that this is hardly a normal minority. It is connected to Islam's worldwide adherents. Living sullenly in European "dish cities'' -- enclaves connected by satellite television and the Internet to the tribal societies they have not really left behind -- many members of this minority are uninterested in assimilation into open societies.

She calls herself "a dissident of Islam'' because, given what Allah supposedly enjoins and what she knows is right, "the cognitive dissonance is, for me, too much.'' She says she is not "a militant atheist,'' but the emphasis is on the adjective.

Slender, elegant, stylish and articulate (in English, Dutch and Swahili), she has found an intellectual home here at the American Enterprise Institute, where she is writing a book that imagines Muhammad meeting, in the New York Public Library, three thinkers -- John Stuart Mill, Friedrich Hayek and Karl Popper, each a hero of the unending struggle between (to take the title of Popper's 1945 masterpiece) "The Open Society and Its Enemies.'' Islamic extremists -- the sort who were unhinged by some Danish cartoons -- will be enraged. She is unperturbed.

Neither is she pessimistic about the West. It has, she says, "the drive to innovate.'' But Europe, she thinks, is invertebrate. After two generations without war, Europeans "have no idea what an enemy is.'' And they think, she says, that leadership is an antiquated notion because they believe that caring governments can socialize everyone to behave well, thereby erasing personal accountability and responsibility. "I can't even tell it without laughing,'' she says, laughing softly. Clearly she is where she belongs, at last.

georgewill@washpost.com
(c) 2006, Washington Post Writers Group

Major_Armstrong

26 Sep 06,, 03:18

I found an interesting web site that is watching some of the most dangerous terrorist facilitators.

http://www.campus-watch.org/

http://www.campus-watch.org/docs/type/research

Repatriated Canuck

26 Sep 06,, 11:42

I'm in the middle I guess. Do what we have to do such as bomb some people in question back to the stone age while at the same time I do care about the environment.

Global warming aside the crap we put into the air is not good for the lungs.

BenRoethig

26 Sep 06,, 12:53

The funny thing is that kind of peacefist talk is making them more bold. They see us as weak.

FOG3

27 Sep 06,, 00:19

Why Democrats hate patriotism

Evan Sayet
BrookesNews.Com
Monday 6 February 2006

Karl Rove recently said (yet again) that the Democrats are not unpatriotic. It’s a brilliant political move akin to the president’s repeated claims that Islam is a religion of peace. No one really believes either claim, making the statements a win-win for the Republican politicians.

By saying that Islam is a religion of peace the president shows his Christian charity in perfect contradiction to the on-going hatefest that is the Arab/Moslem world just as the Republicans, by saying that the Democrats aren’t unpatriotic, shows the good guys to be bending over backwards to be civil even as nothing but hateful slanders are offered against America and Americans from today’s left.

But I am not a Christian or a politician and I’m not feeling any more charitable towards the Democrats than I do towards Islamic fascists, so I’ll speak the truth: Democrats are not only not patriotic, they despise and fear anyone who is.

The reason for this is simple: Modern Liberalism — the dominant ideology of today’s Democrat party — is wedded to the childish philosophy of “multiculturalism.” Multiculturalism is the fantasy that all cultures are equally good and equally right. This is why the Democrats believe that the United Nations and not the United States should decide what is best for America and the world. It is why the Democrats believe we should “celebrate diversity,” as if all differences — say freedom of religion and massacring all infidels — are equally worthy of celebration.

Since the multiculturalists see nothing special about America, patriotism is nothing other than a form of bigotry. To the Democrats, one loves America not for the freedoms and opportunities it affords its citizens, nor for the goodness of our people and institutions, but rather only because we were born here. After all, don’t people who were born in North Korea love North Korea?

Since freedom is of no special value to the Democrats (this is why Democrats heroes like Cindy Sheehan and Michael Moore can argue with a straight face that fascist terrorists seeking to create an oppressive, Taliban-like Caliphate around the world are “freedom fighters”) Americans love of freedom is nothing more than a mindless “hooray for our side” and their hatred of oppression is but mere xenophobia.

Worst of all, American patriots are those so blindly led by their mindless love of freedom as to actually be willing to fight and kill (or even die) for it. Imagine, if you will, something utterly undistinguished — a piece of chewing gum, for example. Now imagine someone cherishing that gum. Now imagine someone who so cherishes that piece of gum that he’s willing to fight, kill, or even die to protect it. And now imagine that person well trained, well fed, and well armed. Pretty scary stuff.

Well, that’s exactly how the Democrat sees the American soldier. Insane, bigoted, and armed. And all for something — freedom — that, to the Democrat, is of no more value than a piece of chewed up gum. No wonder they so hate and fear them.

Evan Sayet is a writer, speaker, and pundit in Los Angeles and former communications director for LA for President Bush. He has been a TV and movie writer with credits ranging from "Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher" to the cult classic "Win Ben Stein's Money" and the Discovery Channel documentary "The 70's: When Decades Attack." He is currently working on a book: "Regurgitating the Apple: How Modern Liberals 'Think.'" Evan’s blog is SayetRight and he receives email at Sayet@Socal.RR.Com (link (http://www.brookesnews.com/060602sayet_print.html))

Islamo-fascists’ useful idiots

Amil Imani
BrookesNews.Com
Monday 14 August 2006

Islam enjoys a large and influential ally among the non-Muslims: A new generation of “Useful Idiots,” the sort of people Lenin identified living in liberal democracies who furthered the work of communism. This new generation of Useful Idiots also lives in liberal democracies, but serves the cause of Islamofascism — another virulent form of totalitarian ideology.

Useful Idiots are naïve, foolish, ignorant of facts, unrealistically idealistic, dreamers, willfully in denial or deceptive. They hail from the ranks of the chronically unhappy, the anarchists, the aspiring revolutionaries, the neurotics who are at war with life, the disaffected alienated from government, corporations, and just about any and all institutions of society. The Useful Idiot can be a billionaire, a movie star, an academe of renown, a politician, or from any other segment of the population.

Arguably, the most dangerous variant of the Useful Idiot is the “Politically Correct.” He is the master practitioner of euphemism, hedging, doubletalk, and outright deception.

The Useful Idiot derives satisfaction from being anti-establishment. He finds perverse gratification in aiding the forces that aim to dismantle an existing order, whatever it may be: an order he neither approves of nor he feels he belongs to.

The Useful Idiot is conflicted and dishonest. He fails to look inside himself and discover the causes of his own problems and unhappiness while he readily enlists himself in causes that validate his distorted perception. Understandably, it is easier to blame others and the outside world than to examine oneself with an eye to self-discovery and self-improvement. Furthermore, criticizing and complaining — liberal practices of the Useful Idiot — require little talent and energy. The Useful Idiot is a great armchair philosopher and “Monday Morning Quarterback.”

The Useful Idiot is not the same as a person who honestly has a different point of view. A society without honest and open differences of views is a dead society. Critical, different and fresh ideas are the life blood of a living society — the very anathema of autocracies where the official position is sacrosanct.

Even a “normal” person spends a great deal more energy aiming to fix things out there than working to overcome his own flaws and shortcomings, or contribute positively to the larger society. People don’t like to take stock of what they are doing or not doing that is responsible for the conditions they disapprove.

But the Useful Idiot takes things much farther. The Useful Idiot, among other things, is a master practitioner of scapegoating. He assigns blame to others while absolving himself of responsibility, has a long handy list of candidates for blaming anything and everything, and by living a distorted life, he contributes to the ills of society.

The Useful Idiot may even engage in willful misinformation and deception when it suits him. Terms such as “Political Islam,” or “Radical Islam,” for instance, are contributions of the Useful Idiot. These terms do not even exist in the native parlance of Islam, simply because they are redundant. Islam, by its very nature and according to its charter — the Quran — is a radical political movement. It is the Useful Idiot who sanitizes Islam and misguides the populace by saying that the “real Islam” constitutes the main body of the religion; and, that this main body is non-political and moderate.

Regrettably, a large segment of the population goes along with these nonsensical euphemisms depicting Islam because it prefers to believe them. It is less threatening to believe that only a hijacked small segment of Islam is radical or politically driven and that the main body of Islam is indeed moderate and non-political.

But Islam is political to the core. In Islam the mosque and state are one and the same — the mosque is the state. This arrangement goes back to the days of Muhammad himself. Islam is also radical in the extreme. Even the “moderate” Islam is radical in its beliefs as well as its deeds. Muslims believe that all non-Muslims, bar none, are hellfire bound and well-deserve being maltreated compared to believers.

No radical barbaric act of depravity is unthinkable for Muslims in dealing with others. They have destroyed precious statues of Buddha, leveled sacred monuments of other religions, and bulldozed the cemeteries of non-Muslims — a few examples of their utter extreme contempt for others.

Muslims are radical even in their intrafaith dealings. Various sects and sub-sects pronounce other sects and sub-sects as heretics worthy of death; women are treated as chattel, deprived of many rights; hands are chopped for stealing even a loaf of bread; sexual violation is punished by stoning, and much much more. These are standard day-to-day ways of the mainstream “moderate” Muslims living under the stone-age laws of Sharia.

The “moderate” mainstream of Islam has been outright genocidal from inception. Their own historians record that Ali, the first imam of the Shiite and the son-in-law of Muhammad, with the help of another man, beheaded 700 Jewish men in the presence of the Prophet himself. The Prophet of Allah and his disciples took the murdered men’s women and children in slavery. Muslims have been, and continue to be, the most vicious and shameless practitioners of slavery. The slave trade, even today, is a thriving business in some Islamic lands where wealthy, perverted sheikhs purchase children of the poor from traffickers for their sadistic gratification.

Muslims are taught deception and lying in the Quran itself—something that Muhammad practiced during his life whenever he found it expedient. Successive Islamic rulers and leaders have done the same. Khomeini, the founder of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, for instance, rallied the people under the banner of democracy. All along his support for democracy was not a commitment of an honest man, but a ruse.

As soon as he gathered the reins of power, Khomeini went after the Useful Idiots of his time with vengeance. These best children of Iran, having been thoroughly deceived and used by the crafty phony populist-religionist, had to flee the country to avoid the fate of tens of thousands who were imprisoned or executed by the double-crossing imam.

Almost three decades after the tragic Islamic Revolution of 1979, the suffocating rule of Islam casts its death-bearing pal over Iranians. A proud people with enviable heritage is being systematically purged of its sense of identity and forced to think and behave like the barbaric and intolerant Muslims. Iranians who had always treated women with equality, for instance, have seen them reduced by the stone-age clergy to sub-human status of Islamic teaching. Any attempt by the women of Iran to counter the misogynist rule of Muhammad’s mullahs is mercilessly suppressed. Women are beaten, imprisoned, raped and killed just as men are slaughtered without due process or mercy.

The lesson is clear. Beware of the Useful Idiots who live in liberal democracies. Knowingly or unknowingly, they serve as the greatest volunteer and effective soldiers of Islam. They pave the way for the advancement of Islam and they will assuredly be among the very first victims of Islam as soon as it assumes power.

Amil Imani is an Iranian-born American citizen and pro-democracy activist. He maintains a website at AmilImani.com (link (http://www.brookesnews.com/061408usefulidiots_print.html))

The media vs. the war on terror

Rich Noyes
BrookesNews.Com
Monday 11 September 2006

In the five years since al-Qaeda terrorists killed nearly 3,000 Americans on September 11, 2001, both international critics and domestic groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union have suggested that the American government’s tactics in the War on Terror are as frightening as terrorism itself. These mostly liberal critics portray the Bush administration as trampling on the civil rights of ordinary Americans, abusing the human rights of captured terrorists and acting without regard to the rule of law.

Unfortunately, the broadcast networks are using this Bush-bashing spin as the starting point for much of their coverage of the War on Terror. An analysis by the Media Research Center finds network reporters are presuming the worst about the government’s anti-terror efforts, and permitting their coverage to be driven by the agenda of leftist groups such as the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights*. While some on the Left have claimed the media were enthusiastic boosters of the Bush administration in the days after 9/11, the MRC found that network reporters began to question the idea of a vigorous War on Terror within days of the attacks.

MRC analysts analyzed 496 stories that aired on ABC’s World News Tonight, the CBS Evening News, and NBC Nightly News between September 11, 2001 and August 31, 2006. They examined all evening news stories about three major elements of the post-9/11 war on terrorism: the treatment of captured terrorists at Guantanamo Bay (277 stories); the National Security Agency’s program to eavesdrop on suspected terrorists calling to or from the U.S. (128 stories); and the USA Patriot Act (91 stories). Major findings:

- Most TV news stories about the Patriot Act (62 percent) highlighted complaints or fears that the law infringed on the civil liberties of innocent Americans. This theme emerged immediately after the law was first proposed in September 2001, less than a week after the 9/11 attacks. Only one report (on NBC) suggested the Patriot Act and other anti-terrorism measures "may not be enough."

- ABC, CBS and NBC heavily favored critics of the Patriot Act. Of 23 soundbites from "experts" (such as law professors or ex-FBI agents), 61 percent faulted the law as a threat to privacy rights. Of 19 soundbites from ordinary citizens, every one condemned the Patriot Act, despite polls showing most Americans support the Patriot Act and believe it has prevented new acts of terrorism.

- Most of the network coverage of Guantanamo Bay focused on charges that the captured al-Qaeda terrorists were due additional rights or privileges (100 stories) or allegations that detainees were being mistreated or abused (105 stories). Only 39 stories described the inmates as dangerous, and just six stories revealed that ex-detainees had committed new acts of terror after being released.

- Network reporters largely portrayed the Guantanamo inmates as victims, with about one in seven stories including the word "torture." The networks aired a total of 46 soundbites from Guantanamo prisoners, their families or lawyers, most professing innocence or complaining about mistreatment. Not one report about the Guantanamo prisoners included a comment from 9/11 victims, their families or lawyers speaking on their behalf.

- Most network stories (59 percent) cast the NSA’s post 9/11 terrorist surveillance program as either legally dubious or outright illegal. Exactly half of the news stories (64) framed it as a civil liberties problem, while 38 stories saw the President provoking a constitutional crisis with Congress and the courts. Only 21 stories (16 percent) focused on the program’s value as a weapon in the War on Terror.

- ABC, CBS and NBC were five times more likely to showcase experts who criticized the NSA’s surveillance program. Of 75 total soundbites, 41 of them (55 percent) condemned the program, compared to just eight (11 percent) from experts who found it worth praising. The CBS Evening News has so far refused to show any pro-NSA experts.

The debate is not about whether reporters can challenge a president and his policies during a time of war. Of course they can. But the networks have chosen to highlight the complaints of those who paint the Bush administration as a danger equal to or greater than the terrorists themselves. Reporters could have spent the past five years challenging the administration with an agenda most Americans share, demanding that the government do everything within its lawful powers to protect the public and prevent another attack. Instead, liberal reporters have opted to join the ACLU in fretting that the War on Terror has already gone too far.

Editor’s note: The Center for Constitutional Rights is a Stalinist organization founded by fanatical supporters of Castro. Lynne Stewart, a prominent member of the CCR, was found guilty last February of aiding and abetting Islamic terrorists. George Soros was one of those who funded Stewart. He has never said why.

*Rich Noyes is the Research Director of the Media Research Center (link (http://www.brookesnews.com/061109media_print.html))

Major_Armstrong

14 Oct 06,, 17:53

A Conspiracy Against Us All
9/11 doubters discard the truth.

By Andrew Cline

Five years after 9/11, the truth about what happened that day is more thoroughly documented and widely available than ever. And yet the crackpot conspiracy theories alleging that the Bush administration orchestrated the attacks or allowed them to happen have become more deeply entrenched and broadly accepted than at any time since that terrible day.

More than a third (36 percent) of the American public believes it is likely that the Bush administration either perpetrated the 9/11 attacks or deliberately failed to stop them “because they wanted the United States to go to war in the Middle East,” according to a Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll released last month. A Zogby poll in August 2004 found that half of New York City residents believed the Bush administration knew the attacks were coming and “consciously failed to act.” The true believers might be a tiny fringe element, but thanks to the Internet, hack academics, and a passive media, they have succeeded in planting a grain of doubt in the minds of a substantial number of Americans.

The Internet is a brilliant vehicle for the dissemination of half-truths — or what only have the appearance of half-truths. Presenting one-sided versions of the story, which usually leave out mountains of available data, and armed with a few snapshots or video clips, conspiracy theorists have crafted page after page of “proof” of their theories.

For example, photographs showing dust and smoke shooting out of the towers as they collapse are cited on website after website as proof that the towers were brought down by explosions. The theory is reasonable enough, so long as you ignore all the available evidence — which is exactly what the theorists do. Numerous engineers who’ve studied the towers, and even ones who haven’t, have concluded that the puffs of smoke and debris are the result of air being pressed outward by the force of the top floors falling. It is really rather elementary: The physical space occupied by any office building consists mostly of air; if the top floors fall, where does the air in the floors below go? Out. There is no other option. Yet the theorists claim that this perfectly expected expulsion of air is proof that bombs were used.

The most prevalent theory is that the government brought the towers down by controlled demolition. This is what Brigham Young University physics professor Steven Jones, put on leave by BYU last week, believes — once again, despite the preponderance of facts showing otherwise.

Jones and his followers believe that the government placed thermite explosives in the buildings and brought them down by detonation. Never mind that thousands of pounds of explosives would somehow have to have been planted throughout the towers — in office space, behind walls, etc. — without anyone noticing. The “proof” of this theory is that the towers came down so quickly: The resistance of the lower floors would have slowed the collapse — unless, that is, the lower floors were exploded.

The video evidence clearly refutes this claim. The towers unquestionably collapsed from the top down, not bottom up. The force of the collapsing top floors, combined with the weakened steel below, were enough to bring the towers down remarkably quickly — almost in free fall, in fact.

A good example of the flimsiness of the conspiracy theories is the claim that a video shows “molten steel” falling from one of the towers. A jet-fuel fire is not strong enough to melt steel, so the picture “proves” that thermite explosives were used. The National Institutes for Standards and Training found was that the photo really shows melted aluminum from one of the aircraft. The theorists scream that melted aluminum is white, and the metal in question is clearly yellow, case closed. In its pure state, melted aluminum is white, but of course, it wasn’t pure when coming out of the towers. It was mixed with all the other burned debris, which changed its color.

The conspiracy theories rely on just that sort of thinking. They approach 9/11 as if it were a controlled scientific experiment: In theory, things are supposed to work in a certain way; because they did not, the official story cannot be true. Conspiracy theorists have little patience for facts of life, such as bureaucratic incompetence, human error, and extreme conditions. They tend to believe that the government functions at peak, even superhuman, levels. Their regard for the government — or at least, for the competence of the government — is particularly strange. The top conspiracy theorist, David Ray Griffin, claims the official story cannot possibly be true is because “such incompetence by FAA officials is not believable.”

The support of “academics” such as Griffin has lent much credence to the conspiracy mongers, but how credible are these academics? Last Wednesday Britain’s Daily Mail published a story claiming: “The 9/11 terrorist attack on America which left almost 3,000 people dead was an ‘inside job,’ according to a group of leading academics.” But the group in question, Scholars for 9/11 Truth, of which Griffin is the most prominent member, is in no sense a “group of leading academics.” It is a collection of like-minded crackpot theorists who happen to have some connection to academia.

Scholars for 9/11 Truth claims about 300 total members, 76 of whom have “academic affiliations,” according to its founder, retired University of Minnesota-Duluth philosophy professor James H. Fetzer. He told this to my newspaper, the New Hampshire Union Leader, last month when one of our reporters discovered that a University of New Hampshire professor was a member and wanted to teach a class on 9/11. The UNH professor, William Woodward, teaches psychology — not engineering or physics — is a Quaker pacifist previously arrested for demonstrating at the office of U.S. Senator Judd Gregg, and has a long history of left-wing activism. When asked by a reporter to explain his theory that the planes were not hijacked airliners, Woodward admitted that he could not account for the missing passengers who boarded their flights and never returned. Nonetheless, he was convinced that he was right — because the official 9/11 report left too much unexplained, he said.

That is how it usually is in the world of conspiracy theorists. It seems that they all claim the official story cannot be true because it has too many holes, yet goes on to posit a theory with holes large enough to, well, fly a jumbo jet through.

Some members of Scholars for 9/11 Truth are or were legitimate academics of good standing at reputable institutions. Yet, of the 76 Fetzer identifies as having “academic affiliations,” there are many with questionable credentials. A partial list includes a “visiting professor of English” at Kyungpook National University in Daegu, South Korea; an assistant professor of English literature at Dogus University in Istanbul; someone whose qualifications are listed only as “Radiology, Medical hypnosis”; another whose qualifications are “French language and culture”; someone who teaches at Tunxis Community College in Farmington, Conn.; another listed as “architect, communicator”; one professor of “English and theater” at the University of Guelph (that’s in Ontario); and one listed as “author, researcher 9/11, JFK, more.” These are some of the “leading academics” promoting the view that the government did 9/11. One author with an article posted on the Scholars for 9/11 Truth website goes by the name “Scooby Doo.”

Of the 76 full members of Scholars for 9/11 Truth, only four are listed as having backgrounds in physics, three in engineering; the other 69 “scholars” are mostly in the humanities and social sciences. Not quite what you’d expect when you hear that a group of “leading academics” supports the theory that the government was behind the attack.

What do the vast majority of actual engineers and investigators who’ve studied the attacks conclude? Not unexpectedly, that the towers and the Pentagon were attacked by airliners hijacked by radical Islamic extremists, and the towers collapsed as a result of the aircraft collisions and fires. Every major investigation, from the 9/11 Commission to a panel of experts assembled by Popular Mechanics magazine to the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST), has come to the same conclusion. And yet more and more people continue to believe the handful of conspiracy nuts. Why?

The Internet bears some responsibility, of course. But the amateur speculation so prevalent there can be cancelled out to a large degree by top-notch investigative reporting, which is what the big media are supposed to do. In this, however, the media have been less than thorough, and, to a large extent, the 9/11 conspiracy theories have spread because the mainstream media have failed in their duty to get to the truth of the matter.

Popular Mechanics did an excellent job refuting the conspiracy theorists, as has the NIST. But their work has been little explored by the mainstream press. On top of that, media outlets have tended to do puff pieces on the conspiracy theorists rather than expose their shoddy research. Too many reports on the conspiracy nuts treat them as if their ideas are to be given the same consideration as the facts. The conspiracy theorists are given the standard J-school “fairness treatment.” Get a quote from Person A and another from Person B, present both sides evenly, and leave it at that. The Washington Post did exactly that in its piece on the conspiracy theorists last Friday. What ever the merits of that approach, it doesn’t work in this case.

None of the conspiracy theories can stand up to scrutiny; that they have stood up at all is mostly because the mainstream press has not given them any real scrutiny. The academics tend to be treated with the respect any other academic would get, and because they are professors the stories are made to read just like any other dispute between professors. But in reality, the scholars peddling the 9/11 theories are practicing almost entirely outside of their realm of expertise (e.g., Griffin, the theologian) and are an ultra-tiny minority dismissed as crackpots by the vast majority of the academic world, not to mention the world of engineering.

As a result, five years after nearly 3,000 innocent people were slaughtered by radical Islamic terrorists, and just as the War on Terror enters an important new phase in which President Bush has vowed to take on both al Qaeda and its allies, and Iran and its puppets, a third of the American people reportedly think the enemy is not the jihadists, who are trying to destroy us, but our own government, which is trying to defend us against the real threat.

This is a serious development. If people don’t understand who the real enemy is, if they doubt the very basis upon which our response to 9/11 was initiated, they are not going to support our necessary war against those who are trying to destroy us. One may have his doubts about the Iraq war; and the Bush administration, in its justification and execution, has earned a great deal of the skepticism about that conflict. But the War on Terror is another matter entirely. The skepticism about that has not been earned; it has been manufactured.

We cannot allow the truth of what happened on 9/11 to be clouded by the conspiracy nuts. America cannot afford to lose the will to fight this war.

— Andrew Cline is editorial page editor of the New Hampshire Union Leader.

Even though Communism has failed all over the world, US and Brit leftie pinkos are still running round like chickens with their heads cut off, unable to handle the fact that red tyrants such as Stalin are pushing up daisies and their halfbaked doctrines should be buried with them, such as this garbage -
"America is like a healthy body and its resistance is threefold:
its patriotism, its morality and its spiritual life.
If we can undermine these three areas, America will collapse from within."
Joseph Stalin

Mick in England

18 Oct 06,, 05:54

Hey, the FBI's tipoff line is useful for reporting suspected US terrorist sympathisers, traitors,assorted lefties and anybody else you don't like.. ;)
https://tips.fbi.gov/

I've used it a few times myself, notably when a guy in an Islamic forum I was monitoring said "Watch for me on the news, I'm going to do something in America"..
I hope Mulder and Scully soon nailed his a$$..

Mick in England

18 Oct 06,, 06:07

Incidentally, although my opinion of leftie Democrats (and the Brit equivalent the Labour Party) is low, they're not all bad, for example I hear John "Hawk the Slayer" Kerry used to lead his gunboat flotilla up Nam rivers to hose down Charlies waterside villes with MG fire..
Pity he went soft after entering politics, voting against many important weapons such as
-The armoured Bradley troop carrier. Perhaps he preferred US troops to patrol Baghdad in flimsy jeeps?
-Patriot missile - excellent medium-range SAM, it protected Israeli cities from Saddams Scud missiles.
-B-2 Spirit stealth bomber, the worlds best strategic bomber.
-Aegis SAM warship, the worlds best defence vessel.
-F/A-18 Hornet fighter-bomber, a first class carrier fighter-bomber, flies into the enemies back yard..

dave angel

18 Oct 06,, 15:26

-F/A-18 Hornet fighter-bomber, a first class carrier fighter-bomber, flies into the enemies back yard..

presumably as long as the enemy's 'back yard' is with 100 yards of the carrier...

don't wish to be overly rude, but if you're 'Mick in England' why do you use American language patterns and slang, have an exhustive knowledge US senators voting patterns and an American serviceman in your avitar?

gunnut

18 Oct 06,, 20:02

Even though Communism has failed all over the world, US and Brit leftie pinkos are still running round like chickens with their heads cut off, unable to handle the fact that red tyrants such as Stalin are pushing up daisies and their halfbaked doctrines should be buried with them, such as this garbage -
"America is like a healthy body and its resistance is threefold:
its patriotism, its morality and its spiritual life.
If we can undermine these three areas, America will collapse from within."
Joseph Stalin

Communism has failed in the real world, but is alive and well on our college campuses. Come over here and sit in our public university's classrooms for a day and you'll see.

gunnut

18 Oct 06,, 20:07

Incidentally, although my opinion of leftie Democrats (and the Brit equivalent the Labour Party) is low, they're not all bad, for example I hear John "Hawk the Slayer" Kerry used to lead his gunboat flotilla up Nam rivers to hose down Charlies waterside villes with MG fire..
Pity he went soft after entering politics, voting against many important weapons such as
-The armoured Bradley troop carrier. Perhaps he preferred US troops to patrol Baghdad in flimsy jeeps?
-Patriot missile - excellent medium-range SAM, it protected Israeli cities from Saddams Scud missiles.
-B-2 Spirit stealth bomber, the worlds best strategic bomber.
-Aegis SAM warship, the worlds best defence vessel.
-F/A-18 Hornet fighter-bomber, a first class carrier fighter-bomber, flies into the enemies back yard..

His exploits in Vietnam were largely unsubstantiated accounts from his personal interviews.

I don't know the truths, but a Boston Globe's investigation revealed that the said encounter with VC was really a 16 year old boy running from his gunboat. He beached his boat, chased him down, and shot him in the back.

His 3 purple hearts were all for minor injuries. One of which was described by a physician as "I've seen worse injuries from gardening" (or something to that effect).

John Kerry's military service records were spotty at best.

Of course these are all 3rd hand information that I have gathered from various news sources. I don't claim to know the truths.

Mick in England

18 Oct 06,, 22:50

Communism has failed in the real world, but is alive and well on our college campuses. Come over here and sit in our public university's classrooms for a day and you'll see.

Just kids talking big that's all, they'll grow out of it ;)

Mick in England

18 Oct 06,, 22:58

the said encounter with VC was really a 16 year old boy running from his gunboat. He beached his boat, chased him down, and shot him in the back.

Pity Kerry's people didn't put that in a press release, it'd have got him the Presidency for sure, you know how people lurv real heroes especially backshooters..
Hey and what a mistake Lt Calley of My Lai Massacre fame never went into politics, he'd be in the White House by now and would be habitually giving orders to torch places like Fallujah..

Mick in England

18 Oct 06,, 23:09

presumably as long as the enemy's 'back yard' is with 100 yards of the carrier...
don't wish to be overly rude, but if you're 'Mick in England' why do you use American language patterns and slang, have an exhustive knowledge US senators voting patterns and an American serviceman in your avitar?

Well I live 50 yards from the famous Mayflower steps (below) from where the Pilgrim Fathers set sail for America 400 years ago, so maybe the steps are a kind of stargate pouring out American vibes and its affected me?
Incidentally, within a year of landing, half the colonists were dead of starvation and disease but the rest stuck it out, otherwise the Yanks would now be speaking a mix of Spanish, French and Comanche, and living in wigwams..
As the history books say - The Spanish went to look for gold, the French went to set up trading outposts, but the English went to stay..
PS - Yes my avatar was a bit dull so I've replaced it with a new guy..

That's a nice pic, Mick. Is your boat in there somewhere?
Looks like you had a barbeque on top of that gate!

-----------------------------------------------

Nah mate that's a scorch mark from a phaser blast when aliens tried to get through the gate. We toasted a few of 'em and told the rest "now **** off back to France"..
As for boats, I ain't got one meself, the only ones I'm interested in are the big cruise liners that dock here so I can stalk the rich old American widow tourists that disembark: then hopefully I can shack up with one and go back with her to help manage her ranch in Texas, a Barbara Stanwyck type would suit me fine,she can rope,throw and brand me anytime she likes...
I fell in love with Babs when I was a teen and saw her in the Big Valley and I've had an unhealthy obsession with older women ever since, I regularly surf the "filthy grannies" websites for new pics and vids to add to my collection..
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058791/